linguistic typology Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the co ...

, ergative–absolutive alignment is a type of

morphosyntactic alignment In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the grammatical relationship between arguments—specifically, between the two arguments (in English, subject and object) of transitive verbs like ''the dog chased the cat'', and the single argument ...

in which the single argument (" subject") of an

intransitive verb In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb whose context does not entail a direct object. That lack of transitivity distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs are ...

behaves like the

object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ...

of a

transitive verb A transitive verb is a verb that accepts one or more objects, for example, 'cleaned' in ''Donald cleaned the window''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not have objects, for example, 'panicked' in ''Donald panicked''. Transiti ...

, and differently from the

agent Agent may refer to: Espionage, investigation, and law *, spies or intelligence officers * Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another ** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuranc ...

of a transitive verb. Examples include Basque, Georgian,

Mayan Mayan most commonly refers to: * Maya peoples, various indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica and northern Central America * Maya civilization, pre-Columbian culture of Mesoamerica and northern Central America * Mayan languages, language family spoken ...

Tibetan Tibetan may mean: * of, from, or related to Tibet * Tibetan people, an ethnic group * Tibetan language: ** Classical Tibetan, the classical language used also as a contemporary written standard ** Standard Tibetan, the most widely used spoken diale ...

, and certain

Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, D ...

(such as the

Kurdish languages Kurdish (, ) is a language or a group of languages spoken by Kurds in the geo-cultural region of Kurdistan and the Kurdish diaspora. Kurdish constitutes a dialect continuum, belonging to Western Iranian languages in the Indo-European lang ...

and many

Indo-Aryan languages The Indo-Aryan languages (or sometimes Indic languages) are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family. As of the early 21st century, they have more than 800 million speakers, primarily concentrated in India, P ...

like Hindi–Urdu). It has controversially also been attributed to the Semitic

modern Aramaic The Neo-Aramaic or Modern Aramaic languages are varieties of Aramaic that evolved during the late medieval and early modern periods, and continue to the present day as vernacular (spoken) languages of modern Aramaic-speaking communities. Within ...

languages. This is in contrast to

nominative–accusative alignment In linguistic typology, nominative–accusative alignment is a type of morphosyntactic alignment in which subjects of intransitive verbs are treated like subjects of transitive verbs, and are distinguished from objects of transitive verbs in b ...

, which is observed in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

and most other Indo-European languages, where the single argument of an intransitive verb ("She" in the sentence "She walks") behaves grammatically like the agent of a transitive verb ("She" in the sentence "She finds it") but different from the object of a transitive verb ("her" in the sentence "He likes her"). When ergative–absolutive alignment is coded by

grammatical case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers ( determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In various languages, nomin ...

, the case used for the single argument of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb is the absolutive, and the case used for the agent of a transitive verb is the ergative. In nominative-accusative languages, the case for the single argument of an intransitive verb and the agent of a transitive verb is the

nominative In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Eng ...

, while the case for the direct object of a transitive verb is the

accusative The accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘ ...

. Many languages have ergative–absolutive alignment only in some parts of their grammar (e.g., in the case marking of nouns), but nominative-accusative alignment in other parts (e.g., in the case marking of pronouns, or in

person agreement In linguistics, agreement or concord (abbreviated ) occurs when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates. It is an instance of inflection, and usually involves making the value of some grammatical category (such as gender ...

). This is known as

split ergativity In linguistic typology, split ergativity is a feature of certain languages where some constructions use ergative syntax and morphology, but other constructions show another pattern, usually nominative–accusative. The conditions in which ergat ...

Ergative vs. accusative languages

An ergative language maintains a

syntactic In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency) ...

or morphological equivalence (such as the same

word order In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...

) for the object of a transitive verb and the single core argument of an intransitive verb, while treating the agent of a transitive verb differently. This contrasts with nominative–accusative languages such as

, where the single

argument An argument is a statement or group of statements called premises intended to determine the degree of truth or acceptability of another statement called conclusion. Arguments can be studied from three main perspectives: the logical, the dialecti ...

of an intransitive verb and the

of a transitive verb (both called the subject) are treated alike and kept distinct from the object of a transitive verb. (reference for figure:Friend, Some Syntactic and Morphological Features of Suleimaniye Kurdish, UCLA, 1985) These different arguments are usually symbolized as follows: * A = agent of transitive verb * O = object of transitive verb (also symbolized as P for "patient") * S = core argument of intransitive verb The relationship between ergative and accusative systems can be schematically represented as the following: ''See

for a more technical explanation and a comparison with nominative–accusative languages.'' Note that the word ''subject'', as it is typically defined in grammars of nominative-accusative languages, has a different application when referring to ergative–absolutive languages, or when discussing

in general. Ergative languages tend to be either verb-final or verb-initial; there are few, if any, ergative SVO-languages.

Realization of ergativity

Ergativity can be found in both morphological and

behavior.

Morphological ergativity

If the language has morphological

case Case or CASE may refer to: Containers * Case (goods), a package of related merchandise * Cartridge case or casing, a firearm cartridge component * Bookcase, a piece of furniture used to store books * Briefcase or attaché case, a narrow box to ca ...

, then the

verb argument In linguistics, an argument is an expression that helps complete the meaning of a predicate, the latter referring in this context to a main verb and its auxiliaries. In this regard, the '' complement'' is a closely related concept. Most predicates ...

s are marked thus: * The agent of a transitive verb (A) is marked as ergative case, or as a similar case such as

oblique Oblique may refer to: * an alternative name for the character usually called a slash (punctuation) ( / ) *Oblique angle, in geometry *Oblique triangle, in geometry * Oblique lattice, in geometry * Oblique leaf base, a characteristic shape of the b ...

. * The core argument of an intransitive verb (S) and the object of a transitive verb (O) are both marked with

absolutive case In grammar, the absolutive case (abbreviated ) is the case of nouns in ergative–absolutive languages that would generally be the subjects of intransitive verbs or the objects of transitive verbs in the translational equivalents of nominativ ...

. If there is no case marking, ergativity can be marked through other means, such as in verbal morphology. For instance, Abkhaz and most

Mayan languages The Mayan languagesIn linguistics, it is conventional to use ''Mayan'' when referring to the languages, or an aspect of a language. In other academic fields, ''Maya'' is the preferred usage, serving as both a singular and plural noun, and as ...

have no morphological ergative case, but they have a verbal agreement structure that is ergative. In languages with ergative–absolutive agreement systems, the absolutive form is usually the most

unmarked In linguistics and social sciences, markedness is the state of standing out as nontypical or divergent as opposed to regular or common. In a marked–unmarked relation, one term of an opposition is the broader, dominant one. The dominant defau ...

form of a word (exceptions include

Nias Nias ( id, Pulau Nias, Nias language: ''Tanö Niha'') (sometimes called Little Sumatra in English) is an island located off the western coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. Nias is also the name of the archipelago () of which the island is the centre ...

and Tlapanec). The following examples from Basque demonstrate an ergative–absolutive case marking system: Here ''-Ø'' represents a zero morpheme, as the absolutive case is unmarked in Basque. The forms for the ergative are ''-k'' after a vowel, and ''-ek'' after a consonant. It is a further rule in Basque grammar that in most cases a noun phrase must be closed by a

determiner A determiner, also called determinative ( abbreviated ), is a word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and generally serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determine ...

. The default determiner (commonly called the

article Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article may also refer to: ...

, which is suffixed to common nouns and usually translatable by "the" in English) is ''-a'' in the singular and ''-ak'' in the plural, the plural being marked only on the determiner and never the noun. For common nouns, this default determiner is fused with the ergative case marker. Thus one obtains the following forms for ''gizon'' ("man"): ''gizon-a'' (man-the.sing.abs), ''gizon-ak'' (man-the.pl.abs), ''gizon-ak'' (man-the.sing.erg), ''gizon-ek'' (man-the.pl.erg). Note that when fused with the article, the absolutive plural is homophonous with the ergative singular. See Basque grammar for details. In contrast, Japanese is a nominative–accusative language: In this language, the argument of the intransitive and agent of the transitive sentence are marked with the same

nominative case In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Eng ...

particle ''ga'', while the object of the transitive sentence is marked with the

accusative case The accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘t ...

''o''. If one sets: A = agent of a transitive verb; S = argument of an intransitive verb; O = object of a transitive verb, then we can contrast normal nominative–accusative English with a hypothetical ergative English: Accusative English: :He (A) found me (O). :He (S) traveled. (S form = A form) Hypothetical ergative English: :He (A) found me (O). :Him (S) traveled. (S form = O form) A number of languages have both ergative and accusative morphology. A typical example is a language that has nominative-accusative marking on verbs and ergative–absolutive case marking on nouns. Georgian has an ergative alignment, but the agent is only marked with the ergative case in the

perfective The perfective aspect ( abbreviated ), sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect that describes an action viewed as a simple whole; i.e., a unit without interior composition. The perfective aspect is distinguished from the i ...

aspect (also known as the "aorist screeve"). Compare: : () "The man is eating an apple." : () "The man ate an apple." is the root of the word "man". In the first sentence (present continuous tense) the agent is in the nominative case ( ). In the second sentence, which shows ergative alignment, the root is marked with the ergative suffix . However, there are some intransitive verbs in Georgian that behave like transitive verbs, and therefore employ the ergative case in the past tense. Consider: : () "The man sneezed." Although the verb "sneeze" is clearly intransitive, it is conjugated like a transitive verb. In Georgian there are a few verbs like these, and there has not been a clear-cut explanation as to why these verbs have evolved this way. One explanation is that verbs such as "sneeze" used to have a direct object (the object being "nose" in the case of "sneeze") and over time lost these objects, yet kept their transitive behavior.

Differing Noun-Pronoun Alignment

In rare cases, such as the

Australian Aboriginal language The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...

Nhanda The Nhanda people, also spelt Nanda, Nhunda, Nhanta, and other variants, are an Aboriginal Australian people who live in the mid-west region of Western Australia around the mouth of the Murchison River. Language The traditional language of ...

, different nominal elements may follow a different case-alignment template. In Nhanda, common nouns have ergative-absolutive alignment—like in most Australian languages—but most pronouns instead follow a nominative-accusative template. In Nhanda,

has a null suffix while ergative case is marked with some

allomorph In linguistics, an allomorph is a variant phonetic form of a morpheme, or, a unit of meaning that varies in sound and spelling without changing the meaning. The term ''allomorph'' describes the realization of phonological variations for a specif ...

of the suffixes ''-nggu'' or ''-lu.'' See the common noun paradigm at play below: Intransitive Subject (ABS) Transitive Subject-Object (ERG-ABS) Compare the above examples with the case marking of pronouns in Nhanda below, wherein all subjects (regardless of verb transitivity) are marked (in this case with a null suffix) the same for case while transitive objects take the

suffix ''-nha''. Intransitive Pronoun Subject (NOM) Transitive Pronoun Subject-Object (NOM-ACC)

Syntactic ergativity

Ergativity may be manifested through syntax, such as saying "Arrived I" for "I arrived", in addition to morphology. Syntactic ergativity is quite rare, and while all languages that exhibit it also feature morphological ergativity, few morphologically ergative languages have ergative syntax. As with morphology, syntactic ergativity can be placed on a continuum, whereby certain syntactic operations may pattern accusatively and others ergatively. The degree of syntactic ergativity is then dependent on the number of syntactic operations that treat the subject like the object. Syntactic ergativity is also referred to as inter-clausal ergativity, as it typically appears in the relation of two clauses. Syntactic ergativity may appear in: *

Word order In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...

(for example, the absolutive argument comes before the verb and the ergative argument comes after it) *

Syntactic pivot {{Linguistic_typology_topics The syntactic pivot is the verb argument around which sentences "revolve" in a given language. This usually means the following: *If the verb has more than zero arguments, then one argument is the syntactic pivot. *I ...

s *

Relative clause A relative clause is a clause that modifies a noun or noun phraseRodney D. Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum, ''A Student's Introduction to English Grammar'', CUP 2005, p. 183ff. and uses some grammatical device to indicate that one of the argument ...

s – determining which arguments are available for relativization * Subordination * Switch reference

Example

Example of syntactic ergativity in the " conjunction reduction" construction ( coordinated clauses) in Dyirbal in contrast with English conjunction reduction. (The subscript (i) indicates coreference.)

( SVO word order): # Father returned. # Father saw mother. # Mother saw father. # Father_(i) returned and father_(i) saw mother. # Father_(i) returned and _____(i) saw mother. # Father_(i) returned and mother saw father_(i). #* Father_(i) returned and mother saw _____(i). (ill-formed, because S and deleted O cannot be coreferential.) Dyirbal ( OSV word order): # Ŋuma banagan^yu. (''Father returned.'') # Yabu ŋumaŋgu buṛan. (lit. ''Mother father-''ŋgu'' saw'', i.e. ''Father saw mother.'') # Ŋuma yabuŋgu buṛan. (lit. ''Father mother-''ŋgu'' saw'', i.e. ''Mother saw father.'') # Ŋuma_(i) banagan^yu, yabu ŋumaŋgu_(i) buṛan. (lit. ''Father''_(i)'' returned, mother father-''ŋgu_(i)'' saw'', i.e. ''Father returned, father saw mother.'') #* Ŋuma_(i) banagan^yu, yabu _____(i) buṛan. (lit. *''Father''_(i)'' returned, mother ____''_(i)'' saw''; ill-formed, because S and deleted A cannot be coreferential.) # Ŋuma_(i) banagan^yu, ŋuma_(i) yabuŋgu buṛan. (lit. ''Father''_(i)'' returned, father''_(i)'' mother-''ŋgu'' saw'', i.e. ''Father returned, mother saw father.'') # Ŋuma_(i) banagan^yu, _____(i) yabuŋgu buṛan. (lit. ''Father''_(i)'' returned, ____''_(i)'' mother-''ŋgu'' saw'', i.e. ''Father returned, mother saw father.'') Crucially, the fifth sentence has an S/A pivot and thus is ill-formed in Dyirbal (syntactically ergative); on the other hand, the seventh sentence has an S/O pivot and thus is ill-formed in English (syntactically accusative).

Split ergativity

The term ''ergative–absolutive'' is considered unsatisfactory by some, since there are very few languages without any patterns that exhibit

. Instead they posit that one should only speak of ''ergative–absolutive systems'', which languages employ to different degrees. Many languages classified as ergative in fact show split ergativity, whereby syntactic and/or morphological ergative patterns are conditioned by the grammatical context, typically person or the tense/aspect of the verb. Basque is unusual in having an almost fully ergative system in case-marking and verbal

agreement Agreement may refer to: Agreements between people and organizations * Gentlemen's agreement, not enforceable by law * Trade agreement, between countries * Consensus, a decision-making process * Contract, enforceable in a court of law ** Meeting ...

, though it shows thoroughly nominative–accusative syntactic alignment. In Hindustani (

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...

and

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' ergative case is marked on agents in the

perfective aspect The perfective aspect ( abbreviated ), sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect that describes an action viewed as a simple whole; i.e., a unit without interior composition. The perfective aspect is distinguished from the ...

for transitive and

ditransitive verb In grammar, a ditransitive (or bitransitive) verb is a transitive verb whose contextual use corresponds to a subject and two objects which refer to a theme and a recipient. According to certain linguistics considerations, these objects may be ...

s (also for

s when they are voliational), while in other situations agents appear in the

. In the Northern Kurdish language Kurmanji, the ergative case is marked on agents and verbs of transitive verbs in past tenses, for the events actually occurred in the past. Present, future and "future in the past" tenses show no ergative mark neither for agents nor the verbs. For example: :(1) Ez diçim. (I go) :(2) Ez wî dibînim. (I see him.) :(3) Ew diçe. (He goes) :(4) Ew min dibîne. (He sees me.) but: :(5) Ez çûm. (I went) :(6) Min ew dît. (I saw him.) :(7) Ew çû. (He went.) :(8) Wî ez dîtim. (He saw me.) In sentences (1) to (4), there is no ergativity (transitive and intransitive verbs alike). In sentences (6) and (8), the ergative case is marked on agents and verbs. In Dyirbal, pronouns are morphologically nominative–accusative when the agent is first or second person, but ergative when the agent is a third person.

Optional ergativity

Many languages with ergative marking display what is known as ''optional ergativity'', where the ergative marking is not always expressed in all situations. McGregor (2010) gives a range of contexts when we often see optional ergativity, and argues that the choice is often not truly ''optional'' but is affected by

semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...

and

pragmatics In linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the int ...

. Note that unlike

, which occurs regularly but in limited locations, optional ergativity can occur in a range of environments, but may not be used in a way that appears regular or consistent. Optional ergativity may be motivated by: * The

animacy Animacy (antonym: inanimacy) is a grammatical and semantic feature, existing in some languages, expressing how sentient or alive the referent of a noun is. Widely expressed, animacy is one of the most elementary principles in languages around ...

of the subject, with more ''animate'' subjects more likely to be marked ergative * The

of the verb, with more ''active'' or ''transitive'' verbs more likely to be marked ergative * The

grammatical structure In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domai ...

or ense-aspect-mood Languages from Australia, New Guinea and Tibet have been shown to have optional ergativity.

Distribution of ergative languages

Prototypical ergative languages are, for the most part, restricted to specific regions of the world:

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the ...

( Kurdish, and some extinct languages), the Caucasus,

the Americas The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. Along with th ...

, the

Tibetan Plateau The Tibetan Plateau (, also known as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau or the Qing–Zang Plateau () or as the Himalayan Plateau in India, is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central, South and East Asia covering most of the Ti ...

, and

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...

and parts of

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torres ...

. Specific languages and language families include:

Americas

Chibchan languages The Chibchan languages (also Chibchan, Chibchano) make up a language family indigenous to the Isthmo-Colombian Area, which extends from eastern Honduras to northern Colombia and includes populations of these countries as well as Nicaragua, Costa ...

Chinookan languages The Chinookan languages were a small family of languages spoken in Oregon and Washington along the Columbia River by Chinook peoples. Although the last known native speaker of any Chinookan language died in 2012, the 2009-2013 American Community ...

(extinct) *

Coosan languages The Coosan (also Coos or Kusan) language family consists of two languages spoken along the southern Oregon coast. Both languages are now extinct. Classification * Hanis ''†'' * Miluk ''†'' ( Lower Coquille) Melville Jacobs (1939) says tha ...

(extinct) *

Eskimo–Aleut languages The Eskaleut (), Eskimo–Aleut or Inuit–Yupik–Unangan languages are a language family native to the northern portions of the North American continent and a small part of northeastern Asia. Languages in the family are indigenous to parts of w ...

* Guaicuruan languages *

Macro-Jê languages Macro-Jê (also spelled Macro-Gê) is a medium-sized language stock in South America, mostly in Brazil but also in the Chiquitanía region in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, as well as (formerly) in small parts of Argentina and Paraguay. It is centered o ...

* Mixe–Zoque *

Panoan languages Panoan (also Pánoan, Panoano, Panoana, Páno) is a family of languages spoken in Peru, western Brazil, and Bolivia. It is possibly a branch of a larger Pano–Tacanan family. Genetic relations The Panoan family is generally believed to be relat ...

* Salish languages *

Tsimshian The Tsimshian (; tsi, Ts’msyan or Tsm'syen) are an Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Their communities are mostly in coastal British Columbia in Terrace and Prince Rupert, and Metlakatla, Alaska on Annette Island, the only r ...

Africa

Majang language The Majang language is spoken by the Majangir people of Ethiopia. Although it is a member of the Surmic language cluster, it is the most isolated one in the group (Fleming 1983). A language survey has shown that dialect variation from north ...

, a

Nilo-Saharan The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of African languages spoken by some 50–60 million people, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of the Nile meet. ...

language of Ethiopia * Päri, although recent studies imply a nominative-accusative system.

Asia

* Assamese *

Burushaski Burushaski (; ) is a language isolate spoken by Burusho people, who reside almost entirely in northern Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, with a few hundred speakers in northern Jammu and Kashmir, India. In Pakistan, Burushaski is spoken by people ...

* Chukchi (endangered) * Hawu *

* Sylheti * Yaghnobi

Australian

* Most

Australian Aboriginal languages The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...

, such as Dyirbal Certain

(e.g.,

Wangkumara The Wanggumara, also spelt Wangkumara, Wongkumara, Wangkumarra, and other variants, are an Aboriginal people of the state of Queensland, Australia. Language Old Wankumara, spoken along the Bulloo River with the Kalali people, was a 'Karna– ...

) possess an intransitive case and an

along with an ergative case, and lack an

; such languages are called tripartite languages or ergative–accusative languages.

Papua

Eastern Trans-Fly languages The Eastern Trans-Fly (or Oriomo Plateau) languages are a small independent language family, family of Papuan languages spoken in the Oriomo Plateau to the west of the Fly River in New Guinea. Classification The languages constituted a branch ...

* various

Trans–New Guinea languages Trans–New Guinea (TNG) is an extensive Language family, family of Papuan languages spoken on the island of New Guinea and neighboring islands ‒ corresponding to the country Papua New Guinea as well as Western New Guinea, parts of Indonesia. ...

Europe

* Basque

Caucasus and Near East

Hurrian The Hurrians (; cuneiform: ; transliteration: ''Ḫu-ur-ri''; also called Hari, Khurrites, Hourri, Churri, Hurri or Hurriter) were a people of the Bronze Age Near East. They spoke a Hurrian language and lived in Anatolia, Syria and Norther ...

(extinct) * Urartian (extinct) * Sumerian (extinct) * South Caucasian: Georgian, Laz *

Northeast Caucasian The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestani or ''Vainakh-Daghestani'', is a family of languages spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia and in Northern Azerbaijan as well as ...

: Chechen, Lezgian, Tsez, Archi (

endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and in ...

) *

Northwest Caucasian The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, Abkhazo-Circassian, Circassic, or sometimes ''Pontic languages'' (from the historical region of Pontus, in contrast to ''Caspian languages'' for the Northeast Cau ...

: Abkhaz, Circassian, Ubykh (extinct) * Kurdish: Gorani, Zazaki,

Sorani Central Kurdish (), also called Sorani (), is a Kurdish dialect or a language that is spoken in Iraq, mainly in Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as the provinces of Kurdistan, Kermanshah, and West Azerbaijan in western Iran. Sorani is one of the two o ...

and Kurmanji Several scholars have hypothesized that

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo ...

was an ergative language, although this hypothesis is controversial.

Languages with limited ergativity

*In

( Indo-Iranian), ergative alignment occurs only when the verb is in the

for

s (also for intransitive verbs but only when they are volitional). *In

Pashto Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani (). Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official langua ...

, ergative alignment occurs only in the past tense. *In Georgian, ergativity only occurs in the

. *The

Philippine languages The Philippine languages or Philippinic are a proposed group by R. David Paul Zorc (1986) and Robert Blust (1991; 2005; 2019) that include all the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi, Indonesia—except Sama–Bajaw (language ...

(e.g.,

Tagalog Tagalog may refer to: Language * Tagalog language, a language spoken in the Philippines ** Old Tagalog, an archaic form of the language ** Batangas Tagalog, a dialect of the language * Tagalog script, the writing system historically used for Taga ...

) are sometimes considered ergative (Schachter 1976, 1977; Kroeger 1993); however, they have also been considered to have their own unique morphosyntactic alignment. See symmetrical voice. *In the

Neo-Aramaic languages The Neo-Aramaic or Modern Aramaic languages are varieties of Aramaic that evolved during the late medieval and early modern periods, and continue to the present day as vernacular (spoken) languages of modern Aramaic-speaking communities. Within ...

(

Assyrian Neo-Aramaic Suret ( syr, ܣܘܪܝܬ) ( �su:rɪtʰor �su:rɪθ, also known as Assyrian or Chaldean, refers to the varieties of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) spoken by ethnic Assyrians, including those identifying as religious groups rather than eth ...

, Lishana Deni,

Koy Sanjaq Syriac language Koy Sanjaq Christian Neo-Aramaic ( syr, ܣܘܪܬ, Sûrat, label=native name) is a variety of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic spoken by Christian Assyrians in Koy Sanjaq in the Erbil Governorate, Iraq. Koy Sanjaq Jewish Neo-Aramaic is a separate variety ...

and others)

formed in the

aspect only, whereas the

imperfective The imperfective (abbreviated or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical aspect used to describe ongoing, habitual, repeated, or similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. Although many languages have a ge ...

aspect is nominative-accusative. Some dialects would only mark

unaccusative In linguistics, an unaccusative verb is an intransitive verb whose grammatical subject is not a semantics, semantic agent (grammar), agent. In other words, the subject does not actively initiate, or is not actively responsible for, the action expres ...

subjects as ergative. Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, in particular, has an ergative type of construction of the

perfective past The perfective aspect (abbreviated ), sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect that describes an action viewed as a simple whole; i.e., a unit without interior composition. The perfective aspect is distinguished from the imp ...

verbal base, where foregone actions are verbalized by a passive construction with the

patient A patient is any recipient of health care services that are performed by healthcare professionals. The patient is most often ill or injured and in need of treatment by a physician, nurse, optometrist, dentist, veterinarian, or other heal ...

being conferred as the grammatical subject rather than by an active construction, e.g. ''baxta qtile'' ("the woman was killed by him"). The ergative type of inflection with an agentive phrase has been extended by analogy to intransitive verbs, e.g. ''qim-le'' ("he has risen"). To note,

Aramaic The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated i ...

has historically been a nominative-accusative language.

Sign languages

Sign languages (for example,

Nepali Sign Language Nepalese Sign Language or Nepali Sign Language is the main sign language of Nepal. It is a partially standardized language based informally on the variety used in Kathmandu, with some input from varieties from Pokhara and elsewhere. As an indige ...

) should also generally be considered ergative in the patterning of

actant In narrative theory, actant is a term from the actantial model of semiotic analysis of narratives. The term also has uses in linguistics, sociology, computer programming theory, and astrology. In narratology Algirdas Julien Greimas (1917–1992), ...

incorporation in verbs. In

sign language Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with non-manual markers. Sign ...

s that have been studied, classifier handshapes are incorporated into verbs, indicating the subject of

s when incorporated, and the

s. (If we follow the " semantic phonology" model proposed by William Stokoe (1991)William Stokoe (1991) Semantic Phonology. Sign Language Studies, 71 ,107–114. this ergative-absolutive patterning also works at the level of the lexicon: thus in

the sign for TEA has the motion for the verb DRINK with a manual alphabet handshape च /ca/ (standing for the first letter of the

Nepali Nepali or Nepalese may refer to : Concerning Nepal * Anything of, from, or related to Nepal * Nepali people, citizens of Nepal * Nepali language, an Indo-Aryan language found in Nepal, the current official national language and a language spoken ...

word TEA चिया /chiya:/) being incorporated as the

Approximations of ergativity in English

English has derivational morphology that parallels ergativity in that it operates on intransitive verbs and objects of transitive verbs. With certain intransitive verbs, adding the suffix "-ee" to the verb produces a label for the person performing the action: :"John has retired" → "John is a retiree" :"John has escaped" → "John is an escapee" However, with a transitive verb, adding "-ee" does not produce a label for the person doing the action. Instead, it gives us a label for the person to whom the action is done: :"Susie employs Mike" → "Mike is an employee" :"Mike has appointed Susie" → "Susie is an appointee" Etymologically, the sense in which "-ee" denotes the object of a transitive verb is the original one, arising from French

past participle In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...

s in "-é". This is still the prevalent sense in

British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Oxford Dictionaries, "English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadl ...

: the intransitive uses are all 19th-century American coinages and all except "escapee" are still marked as "chiefly U.S." by the ''

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a c ...

''. English also has a number of so-called

ergative verb In general linguistics, a labile verb (or ergative verb) is a verb that undergoes causative alternation; it can be used both transitively and intransitively, with the requirement that the direct object of its transitive use corresponds to the ...

s, where the object of the verb when transitive is equivalent to the subject of the verb when intransitive. When English nominalizes a clause, the underlying subject of an intransitive verb and the underlying object of a transitive verb are both marked with the possessive case or with the preposition "of" (the choice depends on the type and length of the noun: pronouns and short nouns are typically marked with the possessive, while long and complex NPs are marked with "of"). The underlying subject of a transitive is marked differently (typically with "by" as in a passive construction): :"(a dentist) extracts a tooth" → "the extraction of a tooth (by a dentist)" :"(I/The editor) revised the essay" → "(my/the editor's) revision of the essay" :"(I was surprised that) the water boiled" → "(I was surprised at) the boiling of the water" :"I departed on time (so I could catch the plane)" → "My timely departure (allowed me to catch the plane)"

References

Bibliography

*Aldridge, Edith. (2008). Generative Approaches to Ergativity. ''Language and Linguistics Compass, 2'', 966–995. *Aldridge, Edith. (2008). Minimalist analysis of ergativity. ''Sophia Linguistica, 55'', 123–142. *Aldridge, Edith. (2016). Ergativity from subjunctive in Austronesian languages. ''Language and Linguistics, 17''(1), 27–62. * Anderson, Stephen. (1976). On the notion of subject in ergative languages. In C. Li. (Ed.), ''Subject and topic'' (pp. 1–24). New York: Academic Press. . * Anderson, Stephen R. (1985). Inflectional morphology. In T. Shopen (Ed.), ''Language typology and syntactic description: Grammatical categories and the lexicon'' (Vol. 3, pp. 150–201). Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press. . * Comrie, Bernard. (1978)
Ergativity
In W. P. Lehmann (Ed.), ''Syntactic typology: Studies in the phenomenology of language'' (pp. 329–394). Austin: University of Texas Press. . * Coon, Jessica, Diane Massam and Lisa deMena Travis. (Eds.). (2017). ''The Oxford handbook of ergativity''. Oxford University Press. * Comrie, Bernard (1989

981 Year 981 ( CMLXXXI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events Births * Abu'l-Qasim al-Husayn ibn Ali al-Maghribi, Arab statesman (d. 1027) * Giovanni Orseolo, Venetian ...

. ''Language Universals and Linguistic Typology'', 2nd ed. University of Chicago Press. * Dixon, R. M. W. (1979). Ergativity. ''Language'', ''55'' (1), 59-138. (Revised as Dixon 1994). * Dixon, R. M. W. (Ed.) (1987). ''Studies in ergativity''. Amsterdam: North-Holland. . * Dixon, R. M. W. (1994). ''Ergativity''. Cambridge University Press. . * Foley, William; & Van Valin, Robert. (1984). ''Functional syntax and universal grammar''. Cambridge University Press. . * Iliev, Ivan G. (2007
On the Nature of Grammatical Case ... (Case and Vocativeness)
* Kroeger, Paul. (1993). ''Phrase structure and grammatical relations in Tagalog''. Stanford: CSLI. . * Legate, Julie Anne. (2008). Morphological and Abstract Case. ''Linguistic Inquiry'' 39.1: 55-101. * Mallinson, Graham; & Blake, Barry J. (1981). Agent and patient marking. ''Language typology: Cross-linguistic studies in syntax'' (Chap. 2, pp. 39–120). North-Holland linguistic series. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company. * McGregor, William B. (2010). Optional ergative case marking systems in a typological-semiotic perspective. ''Lingua'' 120: 1610–1636. *Paul, Ileana & Travis, Lisa. (2006). Ergativity in Austronesian languages: What it can do, what it can't, but not why. In A. Johns, D. Massam, & J. Ndayiragije (Eds.), ''Ergativity: Emerging Issues'' (pp. 315–335). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. * Plank, Frans. (Ed.). (1979). ''Ergativity: Towards a theory of grammatical relations''. London: Academic Press. * Rude, Noel. (1983). Ergativity and the active-stative typology in Loma. ''Studies in African Linguistics'' 14 (3): 265–283. * Schachter, Paul. (1976). The subject in Philippine languages: Actor, topic, actor-topic, or none of the above. In C. Li. (Ed.), ''Subject and topic'' (pp. 491–518). New York: Academic Press. * Schachter, Paul. (1977). Reference-related and role-related properties of subjects. In P. Cole & J. Sadock (Eds.), ''Syntax and semantics: Grammatical relations'' (Vol. 8, pp. 279–306). New York: Academic Press. . * Silverstein, Michael. (1976). Hierarchy of Features and Ergativity. In R.M.W. Dixon (ed.) ''Grammatical Categories in Australian Languages'' (pp. 112–171). New Jersey: Humanities Press. . Reprinted in Pieter Muysken and

Henk van Riemsdijk Henk van Riemsdijk (born 27 April 1948 in The Hague, The Netherlands) is a Dutch linguist and professor emeritus at Tilburg University. Career Van Riemsdijk studied linguistics at the Paris 8 University Vincennes-Saint-Denis and at the Unive ...

(eds.), ''Features and Projections'' (pp. 163–232). Dordrecht: Foris. . * Verbeke, Saartje. 2013. ''Alignment and ergativity in new

.'' Berlin: de Gruyter. * Vydrin, Valentin. (2011). Ergative/Absolutive and Active/Stative alignment in West Africa:The case of Southwestern Mande. ''Studies in Language'' 35 (2): 409–443.

External links

"A quick tutorial on ergativity, by way of the Squid-headed one"
at Recycled Knowledge (blog), by John Cowan, 2005-05-05. {{DEFAULTSORT:Ergative-absolutive language Language Linguistic typology